


The Turning Point

by makeshiftdemo



Category: Parks and Recreation
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-10
Updated: 2015-07-10
Packaged: 2018-04-08 15:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4311276
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/makeshiftdemo/pseuds/makeshiftdemo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And once again, he feels completely pathetic because here he is, standing halfway in his office, looking at his co-worker, and all he can think about is grabbing her head and kissing her. But instead of kissing her, he clamps down his urges and simply takes her offered receipts and assures her, with a smile on his lips, that he will give them to Chris when he returns.</p>
<p>It feels like the turning point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Beginning

He’s never felt more at home than in Pawnee. He hadn’t even felt this at home when he lived in Partridge before he ruined the town and its economy, which is saying quite a lot. He wasn’t even meant to be there more than eight week. Eight weeks that passed by so quickly he didn’t even notice how his routines changed – how instead of keeping his clothes neatly arranged in his luggage without bothering to hang them up in the motel closet, like he normally would, the clothes slowly ended up one by one in the drawers and on the hangers. He doesn’t even know when exactly he started doing that, exactly like he doesn’t know when he started saving peoples names in his phone without the added “- Pawnee” or “- Washington D.C.”. Which is weird because he has three different numbers to people named Tom but only Pawnee Tom, who should’ve been named “Tom Haverford – Pawnee”, is left without an explanatory city next to his name. The same goes for Leslie, and Ann, and even Jerry for god’s sake. It’s like his subconscious knew he would probably end up staying so it made him settle down without him even noticing. Which isn’t that big of a deal now when he’s actually been offered a job that requires him to stay, but he finds it a bit unsettling anyway.

So he ends up moving in with April and Andy because as much as he would like to live alone, like he’s done for a long time, he really doesn’t have the money for it. At least there he gets his own room, which is more than he would’ve gotten if he had gone with some of what was offered on craigslist, so he can’t complain really. Except April and Andy are quite a handful with Andy not being mentally over the age of seventeen and April just turning twenty-one. It makes him feel incredibly old and a bit pathetic, like he should’ve come longer in his life by now. Should’ve had a house, a wife, maybe even a dog and a kid on the way. But he doesn’t, and to be honest, the thought stresses him out a little bit, so he tries not to dwell on it too much. 

And there’re a lot of things in his life he tries not to dwell on. Like the whole Ice Town debacle, which he’s tried to flee from since he was eighteen, but never really succeeded in doing because wherever he goes someone always finds it on the internet and either wants an explanation – here, you now have an opportunity to try to redeem yourself – or wants to just rub it in his face. He also tries not to dwell on his feelings too much because someone always ends up sad and broken since he’s never been able to actually stay anywhere he’s gone. Which makes the whole situation he’s in now very uncomfortable and unsure because he doesn’t really know how to handle it. 

He has feelings for Leslie Knope. And he’s staying in Pawnee.

And he doesn’t know how to cope with that, so he ignores it.

But as his mother always said, he can’t keep on sweeping his problems under the rug whenever he feels that they’re too invasive, too in his face, because that often just ends up making them even worse somehow.

He ignores them anyway.

And he manages it pretty well until Chris sends him and Leslie to Indianapolis where the feelings just start bubbling up uncontrollably, and he absolutely hates it. Hates that he has so little power over himself, hates that they’re co-workers, which makes a relationship truly impossible. Even hates that she starts showing that she feels the same way. So he ends up being on edge the whole trip, his fingers itching with the need to just touch her and when he thinks that the moment arrives – the moment that ends up jeopardizing both of their careers, the moment where he loses control and just kisses her – Chris shows up, and he’s never been more thankful over Chris’s ability to just show up during the most inopportune moments.

He somehow ends up surviving the trip without putting their careers on the line and without making a complete fool of himself, which he counts as a small victory because now he can go back to his normal routines where he doesn’t cross Leslie’s path too often and where he keeps his personal feelings bottled down by occupying himself with work and unnecessary hobbies. And he feels quite calm, with regained confidence that _he can do this_. He can act professional and not let his life be run by hormones that should’ve subsided by now, or at least started being more manageable, since he’s not a teenager anymore.

But when Leslie arrives at the doorway to his and Chris’s office, hand holding a pile of receipts, he feels his heart jump out of rhythm, and he has to concentrate to keep his breathing normal and keep his hands still so they don’t fidget with the hem of his shirt. And once again, he feels completely pathetic because here he is, standing halfway in his office, looking at his co-worker, and all he can think about is grabbing her head and kissing her. But instead of kissing her, he clamps down his urges and simply takes her offered receipts and assures her, with a smile on his lips, that he will give them to Chris when he returns.

It feels like the turning point.

Because after that, Leslie announces that she’s running for city council, and if a relationship between them was inappropriate before it’s a downright horrendous idea now. So he tries to get over his infatuation, because really, it can’t be much more than that since he hasn’t even kissed her. He has absolutely no romantic situations to hold on to and play over in his head, except for the self-created ones he’s stored in his mind, but they don’t really count.

So, in an attempt to not think about Leslie and what could’ve been, he ends up taking up a new hobby, which April turns out to absolutely hate since she can’t stand the smell from the glue and paints.

“Oh my god, what the hell is it you’re doing?”

“I’m painting my Warhammer army.” He lifts one of the more finished and dried soldiers up and stretches out his arm in April’s direction in an attempt to show it to her.

“Whatever,” she says while eyeing the rest of the soldiers still standing on the table, nose scrunched up, before she places down a table fan in front of him and turns it on, which causes the drying paint to be enveloped in small dust flakes.

He sighs, because he really doesn’t know if April has a personal vendetta against him or if this is one of her ways of showing some kind of resemblance to maybe not affection – which really isn’t a word normally associated with April – but more like acceptance. And he feels so needy and vulnerable with his emotions soaring high and with his energy constantly spent on suppressing all of those emotions that he feels embarrassingly thankful when April sits down at the table opposite him, the fan still securely placed in front of her as a shield.

“I didn’t know you liked to play with dolls.”

“These aren’t dolls, they’re an army of orcs and goblins–“

“Yeah, so in other words, dolls.”

“–who are used to beat other armies in the table-top role-playing game called Warhammer.”

She stares at him for a minute until she exclaims, “God, you’re _such_ a nerd.” But she doesn’t walk away as he expects her to do, instead she picks up one of the soldiers and brings it up to her face and looks at it closely. “You should add more blood and gore,” she says as she places the soldier down next to the other half-finished ones on the table again. Then adds, “makes it more authentic.”

He grabs the soldier she just put down and looks at it. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. Thank you Apr–“ But before he finishes his sentence April gets a disgusted look on her face, which she usually gets if she does something that could even remotely be viewed as nice, makes a strangled kind of sound in the back of her throat, stands up and walks out of the kitchen. And he is left there alone wondering if he’ll ever understand how April’s mind works.

It’s oddly enough – because, seriously, he didn’t even date her – a rough couple of weeks that follow, which irritates him to no end because he shouldn’t be so totally hung-up on somebody like he is, and he feels betrayed by his heart every time he sees or has to communicate with Leslie because it always starts thumping away excitedly or nervously. But it all comes crashing down to an uncomfortable and slightly painful halt when her ex-boyfriend Dave comes back to town and he sees them cozily sitting almost pressed together in a booth in a restaurant as he walks by. And it kind of stings a little extra when he realizes it’s his favorite restaurant, the one with the _really_ good calzones.  

He swears at that moment that that’s the last time he dwells on his feelings for Leslie since, quite obviously, that door is now tightly shut and locked behind him. It’s a bittersweet realization that leaves him a bit breathless and somehow lighter. Which probably is why April looks at him like he has developed an extra head when he gets home while Andy sits next to her on the sofa and watches something on the television.

“What’s up with you?”

“I saw Leslie on a date,” he slumps down in the armchair that sits next to the sofa, “with Dave.”

“Good.” He looks over at her, eyebrows slightly drawn together in bewilderment.

“Oh come on, you’ve been like a sad puppy for months now. Super pathetic.”

“Yeah man, we almost put you up for adoption cause you were bumming us out,” Andy adds, eyes still focused on the television. April nods in agreement.

“And here I thought you were my friends.”

“You can’t just assume such things,” April says as she looks over at the program Andy’s watching while she plays with the hair at the nape of his neck. “No wonder you don’t have any friends.”

“Thanks for the support you guys,” he states while he gets up and heads over to his bedroom, suddenly aching to just be alone so he can think out his new course of action.

“You’re welcome!” he hears April bellow as his door closes. And he can’t help but to smile a little because even as unpredictable April is, she’s still pretty predictable, and in a strange way, that’s comforting.

 

* * *

  

It takes another week before he starts dating more frequently and he can honestly say that the only remotely normal woman he’s met as of yet is Shauna Malwae-Tweep, and they end up having next to nothing in common. So when he gets home after another failed date he finds April and Andy on the sofa again and he wonders if they ever move from there, although this time there’s tiny marshmallows scattered around the apartment so he assumes that there’s been some kind of movement done on their part earlier in the day.

He decides to quietly walk past them since he doesn’t want to go over what happened and what didn’t happen on his date one more time because it always ends with a deadpanned remark from April about how old he is. And how sad he is. And even though he knows April is never really serious about anything he doesn’t feel like defending his slightly awkward choices of conversational topics.

He thankfully makes it to his room without being peppered with questions even though he knows that at least April saw him walk past them, and he breathes a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding when he shuts the door quietly behind him.

Since the beginning of the week everything has been kind of hectic, which really isn’t a surprise when one gets offered a job opportunity to work on a campaign in Washington. And he can’t really comprehend why he got it either. Sure, he has helped Leslie a little bit on her campaign because he knows she would be perfect for the job, but he hasn’t been overly involved for obvious reasons, so he doesn’t really understand what he has done to impress Jennifer that much. Not that he’s complaining of course, it’s kind of a dream come true which scares him a little bit because dreams never come true to him.

He shuffles over to his desk and sits down on the chair and stairs for a bit into the wall because he can’t really decide what to do. On the one hand maybe it’s good for him to leave town for a while and focus on something new, something he knows he’ll absolutely love doing, but on the other hand he really loves Pawnee too so maybe he’ll end up miserable in Washington.

The thought makes him a bit angry because he’s always like this. When something good finally comes around he can’t just be happy about it and move along with it. He always ends up picking it apart, analyzing it until the novelty and proudness wears off and he’s sitting there with his self-created dilemma. So this time, he clamps down on his insecurities, ignores his overly active brain and all the worst-case scenarios it’s conjuring, and before he can second-guess himself he sends a text to Jennifer – _I’ll do it._

Which, of course, brings on an entirely different dilemma.

A dilemma that involves April of all people, because he knows he’ll need an assistant of a sort to help him out with the more mundane paperwork and he really wants to ask her to be that assistant. Which would come as a surprise to some people because even though they live together the two of them don’t really come off as close friends. The sort of friends who travel together and work closely together and even, maybe, take up a new apartment together in a slightly bigger and scarier city. But then he thinks about Andy and how he would be left all alone in the house and how he would split up a perfectly good couple, and it kind of makes him feel like the Grinch, although it has nothing to do with Christmas.

He sighs and taps a pencil against a notebook that lies on his desk impatiently. Maybe this shouldn’t be his decision to make. Maybe he should just offer April the job and then let her and Andy decide if the whole thing is worth it. Yeah, he should do that; it doesn’t have to be his dilemma. It doesn’t make him feel any less of a Grinch though.

So he steels himself and walks out to the living room again, determined to talk with April now before he ends up losing his nerve, and finds her with her stomach perched on top of Andy’s feet, which are stretched upwards while April balances on top of them with her arms flailing a bit on either side of her. This isn’t the first time he finds her “flying”, as they call it.

“April, I need to talk to you.”

“Yeah? What is it?” She says while almost loosing her balance.

“Well, I kind of need to speak to you both actually… I’ve accepted a new job in Washington D.C. which means I’m going to move out for a couple of months.” The moment he finishes his sentence Andy lowers his legs and April unceremoniously rolls off to the floor while asking if it’s because of Leslie.

“No. Well, not in the sense you expect,” he says while he drags a hand through his hair before continuing, “My work for Leslie’s campaign got noticed by Jennifer Barkley – you know, the woman who leads Bobby Newport’s campaign – and she wants me to work with her on another campaign in Washington. And I accepted.”

“Oh, man, that’s great!” Andy exclaims. “But why do you need to talk to April about it?” He looks between both of them before he open his mouth in an expression of surprise. “Oh my god, April! You never told me you were running for president!”

He chooses to ignore Andy’s outburst and focuses on April instead. “I’m going to need an assistant, kind of like an intern who helps me with paperwork and with everything really, and I thought maybe you would be interested.” Then quickly adds, “I think it’s a really good opportunity career-wise.”

“That sounds really boring.”

“What? No, babe! That sounds super cool.” Andy grabs April’s hands as he says this and looks at her expectantly while he runs his thumps over her knuckles soothingly.

“You think I should do it?”

“It’s just a couple of months, babe. You’ll be back like after ten seconds or something.”

“But what about us?” April sounds a lite whiny, which is a sound that he knows she almost only uses when she talks to Andy. “I’ll miss you.” She even adds a pout to her lips for emphasis, which really doesn’t strike him as an April thing to do.

“Yeah, me too, but we can talk like all the time on the phone.”

Andy frowns and looks over at him. “You can talk on the phone there right?” 

He contemplates explaining to Andy that yes, since Washington is situated in America, one can talk on the phone, but he refrains since he knows it’ll fall on mostly deaf ears. He settles for a nod in affirmation.

“Oh, oh! And Skype, we can use Skype all the time.”

They’re all silent for a while and he thinks that April’s probably going to say no. Not because he thinks she wouldn’t enjoy the job in some very April-like disapproving way, but because he thinks she values her relationship with Andy too much. And he can’t really argue with that because they seem to share something that he probably hasn’t been close to experience himself yet. Which is why he feels a bit surprised when April finally answers.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll do it.” 

And that’s how he ends up moving to a tiny apartment in Washington D.C. with April three weeks later, right after Leslie wins her campaign.


	2. The Endings of Old

“The bedroom’s mine,” April states while she picks up her bags and quickly moves in the direction of said room before he has any time to react.

The apartment is smaller than he thought it would be when he signed the lease, which he might’ve stupidly done while they were still in Pawnee since there weren’t a lot of apartments on the market. It’s box-shaped and consists of a tiny hallway, a somehow even smaller kitchen, a living room and what was supposed to be two bedrooms which turns out to in reality be a normal sized bedroom and what can only be described as a closet. And since he has no desire to reenact Harry Potter’s life while he lived at the Dursley’s he skips trying to cram his things into the closet bedroom and opts instead to take over a small part of the living room. It’s not the best solution maybe, but he thinks it’ll work since the room’s shape leaves a small part that could easily be divided from the rest with the help of a well-placed IKEA bookcase or some drapes.  

He ends up dragging most of their boxes up the two stairs while April starts unpacking the most essential things, which doesn’t take long since they didn’t bring a lot of things to begin with. It all feels a bit strange with only him and April for, what he can remember, the first time, and he wonders if they’ll end up killing each other before their employment is over with them living in so close proximity without Andy.

He glances over at April when she rummages through an extra noisy box and brings up a Captain Picard action figure and holds it before her face. Before he can contain himself he walks over to her with a big smile. “ _Yes_ , I’ve been looking all over for him. Is Data in the box as well?” he asks excitedly as he takes Captain Picard from April’s grasp and looks him over after any type of damage. After several seconds of complete silence for an answer, he turns and looks at April who has a stony expression of complete boredom and maybe just a little hint of something that looks like disgust plastered on her face. His smile falters a little before he clears his throat and leans over the box to look for Data.

“More dolls, Ben?”

He can’t really tell if the tone in her voice is mocking or amused – maybe it’s both – so he chooses to ignore it while he brings Captain Picard and Data over to the small kitchen counter which is the only surface in their apartment not covered in either personal items or boxes. In the short amount of time he’d lived in Pawnee he’d settled in so nicely he’d absolutely forgotten how extremely boring and tedious it is to unpack ones things. It’s like an explosion of ones possessions hits the new apartment that scatters everything in no particular order to every surface found, and all of April’s things are starting to mix into the growing pile of his own things and he knows it’ll probably take them weeks to sort everything out, even though it’s not an massive amount of things, because April’s really good at procrastinating when it comes to boring stuff and he has too much to prepare before his first day at work. 

And he’s right of course, because three weeks later the apartment still looks like a bomb struck it. Although it does look a bit better with the added furniture they got from their trip to IKEA one week previously because now he actually has some privacy in his makeshift bedroom since he can now “close his door” by pulling forward a curtain. Which is okay really because April mostly stays in her room anyway.

So it continues like this. They work, although they don’t see too much of each other since they both run around a lot, and when they get home they either eat something together in the living room in front of the television or he eats alone while April eats in her room with Andy through Skype.

Today though, he sits in front of the television by himself and he can’t complain really because today is calzone day and nothing beats calzone day. And calzone day is always best spent alone because April, like everyone else it seems, doesn’t appreciate calzone’s as much as he thinks she, and the rest of the world, should. Which is why he’s taken a bit by surprise when April steps out of her room thirty minutes after stating, “Eww, no,” while looking at his perfectly awesome calzone’s, and sits down next to him on the sofa. As she makes a move to take one of his calzone’s off of his plate he bats her hand away and looks her in the eye before stating, “Eww, _no_.”

She ignores him and takes one anyway before turning her body towards the television.

“I thought you were going to eat with Andy?”

“Yes, well, apparently Mouse Rat moved in and they’re rehearsing.”

“The whole band moved in with Andy?”

“Yeah.”

And as he looks at April, he thinks he can tell that she is more angry looking than normally, which he can understand since this is the third dinner date Andy has skipped this last week. He’d probably be more pissed than April seems to be, but then again, he’s always heard that he’s a sensitive person so maybe that’s why April doesn’t seem to take this as badly. Although, the fact that she’s eating calzone’s with him right now is quite alarming in itself.

It’s a bit unsettling to see April react in a, what he would call, normal way, and he doesn’t really know what to do about it. So he sits quietly next to her and lets her steal as many calzone’s she wants, while acting like he doesn’t notice her, in a silent act of support.

 

* * *

 

The following weeks he notices that April and Andy seem to talk less and less frequently. At least that’s what he observes because April never talks to him about important personal matters, especially not if they have anything to do with romance and relationships. But the more she tries to act like nothing is changing, that she really isn’t sad or mad or even disappointed, she only comes off as more snappy and short-tempered and he ends up having to walk on eggshells around her as to not upset her more. Which is fine by him because, believe it or not, he actually cares for April’s wellbeing, and it kind off hurts him a little that she is currently hurting because not that many months ago he was in a, not really but almost, similar place, so he can sort of relate.

“ _What?_ ” It’s not the first time she snaps at him today, because apparently he’s walking around with huge puppy eyes and whenever she enters the living room where he is he looks at her sadly with those huge eyes. Her words, not his.

“Do you want to paint some Warhammer?” She must really be feeling blue because she doesn’t even take the opportunity to call him a nerd or to make fun of him for “playing with dolls”. All she does is look at him a little quizzically before she nods her head the tiniest bit before she leaves the room. Which confuses him a bit because he doesn’t know if that nod in affirmation was a joke, but he’s proven wrong when she returns from her room with the table fan she placed in front of her those months ago when he first started up with the hobby.

So they sit the next hour in complete silence by the small kitchen table, April with her table fan once again securely placed in front of her. And it’s surprisingly comforting to sit there with her because they work really well together, even without communicating, and she actually seems to enjoy herself somewhat because while he takes care of all the base coats of paint, he leaves all the gory details to April.

“Do you mind me asking what’s going on with you and Andy?” The moment the words spill from his lips he wants to hit himself because April looks so mad it kind of scares him, and the nice, easygoing moment they had going is thoroughly broken. But she seems to collect herself a bit because instead of screaming at him and leaving the room she focuses her eyes on him and just looks at him.

The moment he starts fidgeting nervously she opens her mouth, “What do you know of relationships anyway?”

And of all the things she could say, of all the sarcastic responses she usually uses, he never thought she would give him the satisfaction of a real conversation, although she might not actually answer any of his questions up front.

“I’ve had a few. Maybe I haven’t had the same exact issues you two might have but talking about it can really help sometimes.”

“Your hand doesn’t count, you know.”

And he wants to laugh because that’s April being April, because April always hides behind a wall of sarcasm and distaste, and he sometimes wonders if Andy’s the only one who’s seen the real April. He settles for a small smile while he looks up at her, paintbrush sill held over the tiny soldier in his hand.

“My hand and I never have any issues so I wouldn’t count it as one of those relationships either.”

She wrinkles her nose a bit in disgust but he can see a shadow of a smile grace the side of her mouth, and the sight of it makes his heart lift a bit.

They continue to sit in silence for a while, still painting, because he doesn’t want the moment to end. So instead of pressing the issue he finishes up the soldier he holds in his hand before placing it next to another to let it dry, only to pick up a new, unfinished one.

April makes a strangled sound opposite him by the table and throws her head back and looks up at the ceiling. “I think we might be growing apart or something, okay?” She sounds mad, like it’s his fault that she’s telling him this, but he knows this is another one of her many protective walls because she would never offer this kind of information if she didn’t truly want to do it herself.

“Because you don’t live together anymore?” he asks tentatively.

“Yeah,” she sighs. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

He looks at her and waits for her to continue because he can see the tension in her entire frame, like she hasn’t really said what she wants to and is now struggling to get it out.

“It’s not…” she pauses for a few seconds, still staring at the ceiling. “It’s not easy to talk to Andy if you’re not face to face with him. He’s got the attention span of a six year old – which, you know, I normally love because grown-ups are _so_ boring,” she looks pointedly at him. “But now, when we’re apart… It doesn’t really work.” 

He nods a bit in understanding, not really knowing if she sees the movement since she’s got her eyes fixated on the ceiling again.

“Have you told him this?”

She stalls for a bit by adding some details to a goblin soldier while feigning concentration.

“I have… tried.” Her voice sounds forced like she has to squeeze the words out of her throat.

“Maybe you could try writing him instead?” he suggests as he watches her eyebrows knit together for a few seconds in contemplation.

“I don’t write.”

“You don’t write?” This time it’s his eyebrows that knit together in confusion.

“I don’t write,” she repeats.

“Maybe you could try? Sometimes things are easier to write down rather than say to a person, and sometimes those words are easier to understand as read instead of as spoken.”

“Gee thanks, Dr. Phil.”

He sighs quietly because talking to April is like participating in a model U.N. where every time a new country gets to speak the whole game changes. But it looks like she might be listening to him even thought he’s met with sarcasm, because she still has a small crease between her eyebrows like she’s really thinking something through. And as he looks at her he feels a bit bad for whisking April away to Washington, but maybe it’s good April and Andy face these sort of complications in their relationship early on before they make any dumb and spontaneous decisions.

He wants to say something more but doesn’t because he’s afraid that she’ll run away like a wounded animal after remembering how utterly human she’s been acting over the last fifteen minutes. She must be sensing his trepidation, because right then she looks up at him and just silently watches him and it’s like she’s struggling to get some words out again. But instead of saying something she settles for a small, almost non-existent, nod that he interprets as a quiet _thank you_ , and he wants to say _anytime_. Wants to say that if she can’t say something she can write him too. She can practice on him. But he doesn’t, and instead he settles for a small nod in return, a smile tugging at the edge of his mouth. She stands then, turns off the table fan, and quietly exits the room and ten seconds later he hears the small click of her door shutting behind her.

A week later he comes home to find a box in the hallway marked “Andy”, and it’s another few days until he sees April emerge from her room.


	3. The Start of Something Foreign

It’s hard living with someone who’s sad and feeling broken because he selfishly wants to be happy and talk about great things that happen at work. And he kind of wants to slap himself because he’s never been this selfish before, but somehow April’s become someone he wants to share his ups and downs with, although, right now, she isn’t susceptible to much at all and just walks around the apartment like a zombie. So in an attempt to cheer her up a little bit he gets her her own set of a Warhammer army because he has absolutely no idea what to do to make her happier. And since she didn’t look like she hated painting his set of orcs and goblins maybe it isn’t such a bad idea after all.

She only grunts a bit noncommittally when he places the army of lizardmen before her and a new set of colors before she gets up and locks herself in her room again. Which is okay, because he didn’t really expect a standing ovation of excitement from her at this point, so he gives her the space he thinks she needs and stays put in the living room while trying to ignore the little sounds that escape from her bedroom. He isn’t sure if she actually cries – _ever_ – but he thinks he can hear some sniffles sometimes and it sort of kills him. 

The next day he finds the kitchen table free from any lizardmen and he can’t help but to hope that she hasn’t thrown them away in a fit of rage. But as he searches through the trashcan he can’t find anything, so he guesses she’s only moved them somewhere more fitting than the place where they really should have their dinners instead of on the table in front of the sofa and the television. 

He only sees her a handful of times the next following days, and he doesn’t know if it’s because the amount of time he has to spend on working or because she’s still hiding from him and the world in general. When he comes home though, his spirits are lifted because in front of him, on the floor in front of the front door, April has placed the entire army of crazy colorful lizardmen in a semi-circle. He laughs then, not only because it’s such an April thing to do, but also because this probably means that she’s at least moving in the right direction with the whole break-up with Andy, and it gladdens him. 

He looks for her, tentatively knocks on her bedroom door, but she isn’t home, so he gets his own army and starts setting up a battlefield in their hallway. He lays some of the soldiers from both armies down and smears some old ketchup that he found in the refrigerator on the floor next to them in a messy attempt to amuse April. But it’s all worth it because when he hears the front door open later in the evening he notices the tiny laugh that escapes her throat. And even though it’s really quite small and quiet, it still sounds like music to his hears and he can’t help but smile at her when she finally enters the living room.

“I see you took up on my declaration of war,” she says while still standing in the doorway, shoulder leaning into the wall.

“Well, someone had to. Can’t have a renegade army wrecking havoc in the hallway.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and looks at him with a serious expression on her face, eyes boring into his. “It’s on. Prepare to die, orc-gobliner.”

“Not if you die first, lizard… lizardwoman.” He winces a bit because _god_ , why is he so terrible at coming up with fast and witty responses? April doesn’t seem to mind though, because she looks murderously at him while she drags her forefinger across her throat and then points it at him before she promptly leaves the room.

So the war continues. Every day he finds that the army has moved somewhere different with new casualties lying in a pile of drying ketchup, and he actually really likes the whole war game they’ve got going on, even thought it’s nowhere near a real game of Warhammer. They, compared to a real game of Warhammer, have no set of rules whatsoever, and he even suspects that April sometimes cleans her fallen soldiers off before replacing them in her ranks. 

This morning he found the armies in the shower behind the shower curtain and he had to spend the next ten minutes stressfully moving them out of the way before hopping in as to not be late for a really important meeting. He even had to skip breakfast so he could move them to right outside Aprils room before she got up. But the sneaking around in the late evenings and early mornings is all worth it because April seems a lot happier. She doesn’t smile that often, of course, but she didn’t do that while she was with Andy either, but now she actually spends some time with him in the living room instead of being alone in her room behind a closed door. And he really appreciates her company. She’s witty and funny in an extremely dry way, although she would possibly kill him if he shared that thought with anyone else. And it’s not the first time he wishes he could read her better so he’d know what she thinks about him in return.

 

* * *

  

Three weeks later the war game is still on in full force. They’ve even bought more soldiers to add to their ranks in an attempt to keep the game alive, although April ended up with a mismatched army consisting of lizardmen and vampire counts since the store was out of lizards, but she doesn’t seem to mind.

He feels kind of giddy on the way home from work because the evenings have become his favorite part of the day. He always gets up before April and arranges the army somewhere new before she gets up, and she in return always changes things around right after he heads of to work in the morning, which leaves him with a fun surprise every day when he comes home from work. Today though, he finds the soldiers in the same place and April running around in a hurry, which is weird because April is almost never at home before he is.

“What’s up?” he rolls his eyes at his own choice of words because it sounds way too young for his own ears, like he’s trying to be as young and cool as April. He hopes she doesn’t notice.

“I kind of, sort of… have a date. Or something,” she mumbles as she stumble pass him into the kitchen to take out a bottle of water from the refrigerator. “Sorry I didn’t have time to move them this morning,” she adds while pointing with her bottle in the armies’ general direction. “See it as a two day skirmish or whatever.”

“Eeh yeah, sure,” he says while following her as she walks from the kitchen to her room and he ends up leaning into the doorway as he watches her pick at piles of clothes lying on the floor.

“So… a date you say? Who’s the lucky guy?”

“Oh, shut up. Stop acting like a total dad,” she says while she picks up a large shirt and throws it in his direction but it tumbles to the floor about halfway.

“No, no. I’m actually, genuinely, curious.” He’s still leaning against her doorway and he can’t really tell if she’s actually, truly, nervous or if she’s just stressed out.

“Yeah, well, it’s no one. It’s just this guy I met in a cave and accidentally stole a ring from. Totally weird guy, you wouldn’t like him.”

“I can’t figure out if your date is Gollum or Orin,” he says and then quickly adds, “Please tell me you aren’t dating Orin, that guy is terrifying.”

She makes a strangled sound while looking up at the ceiling, hands still holding what looks like a skirt, “No, Ben. I’m not dating Orin.”

“Thank god.”

He can’t help but to look at the skirt in her hands more closely because sure, April has worn skirts before, but not that often and he thinks she’d probably look good in it.

“You should wear that.”

“Oh, this old thing?” she says while looking down at the garment she’s holding and he knows she’s doing it sarcastically because the tone in her voice is hard to mistake as anything else. He has to bite back the urge to roll his eyes and sigh at her.

“Yeah, it looks nice.”

“How’d you know? You haven’t seen me in it.”

“Well, I can imagine.”

“Are you imagining me with only the skirt on or do you have suggestions for the top half as well?” And he knows she’s just messing with him. He knows this and still he can’t help but to fleetingly imagine her in just the skirt and he kind of wants to sink through the floor and disappear because it’s not a bad sight his mind is conjuring up and he hopes his face isn’t as red as it feels.

“Eeh, you–,” he starts, pausing to clear his throat. “Maybe that one will work.” And he wants to thank god, or whatever mighty thing that controls the universe, because luckily the piece of clothing he randomly points out on the floor thankfully happens to be a shirt. It’s black and a little lacy, which probably isn’t the right way to describe it but he knows next to nothing about clothing except when it comes to skinny ties.

When she minutes later emerges from her bedroom dressed in the skirt, that also happens to be black, and the lacy shirt top thing he can’t help but to think of a funeral.

“It looks very… somber,” he says and really, he should’ve expected the large grin that spreads on April’s face since no one likes death and depressed things more than her.

As she says _thank you_ he wants to ask her again whom it is she’s going on a date with and he wonders why it feels so important for him to know. Like it even makes any difference if it’s a total stranger or, absurdly enough since they aren’t in the same city, someone like Tom or whomever really. It kind of irritates him that it matters. It shouldn’t matter. 

But he can’t help thinking about whom it could be she’s seeing even hours after she’s left the apartment. It pops up during commercials – does he have light hair like that guy? Or absurdly white teeth like that guy? He tries to ignore it all by angrily turning off the television and by starting to read his book instead. It’s a good book, and good books tend to keep his brain occupied for hours if he has the time.

Minutes later he sighs dejectedly because he can’t for the life of him bring himself to concentrate enough to actually understand what it is he’s reading. So he moves their armies, even though it’s technically April’s turn to move them, but he doesn’t care. He sets them up in the hallway, and it kind of resembles the first time April had them placed there and it makes him feel weirdly glad and sad at the same time. Which in turn makes him annoyed because _what the hell is wrong with him_? Why is it that suddenly a floodgate has opened and all he can think about is things relating to April? Was it the skirt?

And as he sits there on the sofa, hands slowly running up and down his thighs in a somewhat soothing way, he suddenly feels cold with the realization that he has felt like this before. So he drops everything he’s doing and goes to bed, and as he lies there staring up at the ceiling he can’t help feeling a bit pubescent – all tingly and simultaneously mad by the things he’s feeling and trying not to think about.

He lies there for a few hours, brain never really shutting down so he can sleep, and when the small rays of the morning sun start creeping along the floor of the living room and into his corner of the room he realizes that April never came home that night. He feels his gut clenching and a pain soar through his chest and he can’t really deny it anymore.

He has feelings for April Ludgate. And they live together in Washington. D.C.

And he’s never in his life wished that he’d be one of the reasons two people break-up. But he does now.


	4. The Unknown

He doesn’t sleep that night, his ears straining to listen for sounds from the front door, but all he hears is the neighbor when he shuffles past on his way to work at seven. It isn’t until eight thirty that he hears the quiet jiggle of keys outside the door and his heart skips a beat when he hears it open and April enter. He doesn’t know if he should get up and great her, and in reality, he doesn’t know what he should say. It’s weird because all he wants to do is run out to the hallway and scream at her and simultaneously kiss her. And he kind of feels ready to burst from all the conflicting emotions. 

He hears her stumble and smack her hands at the wall when she catches herself from falling. Hears the quiet _shit_ and the following scrambling on the floor and he almost gets up to see if she’s all right but before he can get up he hears her approaching his side of the living room and his heart starts to hammer in his chest. So he does what every grown-up does; he pretends to be asleep.

“ _Ben_.” She thinks she’s whispering but it’s really more like a stage whisper and he just lies there in his bed and doesn’t know what to do.

He swallows, opens his mouth, and promptly panics. 

“ _Beeeen._ ”

He slowly sits up. “Yea– yeah?” 

“I broke it, Ben. Look,” she says and shoves one of her lizardmen with half an arm missing and the head pressed awkwardly at an angle at him. “Look, I killed him.” She laughs then and if he wasn’t so enthralled by the most easy-going laugh he’s ever heard from April, he’d probably been a bit unsettled by her laughter paired up with the words _I killed him_ and her funeral appropriate clothes.

“We can probably fix him,” he consoles after he takes the soldier from April and looks it over.

“Yeah?” she half whispers while she climbs up at the foot of the bed. She looks at him expectantly as she tucks her legs under her.

He swallows. “Yeah.”

He has no idea what she’s up to and she’s obviously still pretty drunk, and the whole thing makes his head spin because only some mere hours ago he hadn’t really grasped the fact that his feelings of friendship had somehow morphed into a whole lot more without him noticing. And he still doesn’t know where she’s been and whom she’s been _with_ in probably more ways than one. He feels a bit sick.

She hunches her back and rests her elbows on her knees, her chin resting on her hands and she looks sleepy, her eyes drooping a bit.

“Have you slept anything?” He can’t really decide if it’s a good question to ask because sure, he wants to know, but he doesn’t know if he’s ready to face the answer to that question just yet.

“Hm?” she mumbles with her head still resting on her hands, eyes closed.

“Have you slept?”

He gets an answer then, but it’s not in English and he has absolutely no idea what she’s saying so he gets up and gently grabs her upper arm and tries to prompt her to move.

“C’mon, let’s get you to bed,” he says while he tries to pry her legs from under her instead since she isn’t moving herself.

She mumbles something.

“What?” he prompts.

“Quiero quedarme aquí.”

“April, you know I don’t speak Spanish.” She hangs her head a bit but starts moving, slowly following his directions. And as he finally gets her to stand he has to grab her by the waist as not to let her fall and he wonders how much she’s had to drink because he’s never seen her like this.

They stumble a bit on the way to her bedroom as April’s knees give out a couple of times, and he wonders if this is the closest he’s been to her. He has his arm around her waist while his other hand is holding on to hers to keep it draped around his shoulders. And as he turns his head slightly to the left he can smell her hair and the strong reek of alcohol on her breath, which shatters the romantic illusion he had going there for a while, because in reality, he should know, that he has nothing to actually give April. He’s not like Andy – easy going and funny and self-assured – he’s stiff, way too serious most of the time and while he’s self-assured in some areas, like work, he sometimes gets completely crippled by his own insecurities and fears. Why would April want anyone like that? She hates grown-ups – “They’re boring. And sad because they’re boring and have nothing to live for because they’ll die soon” – and she’s never enjoyed any of his fan fictions or other hobbies for that matter. Except maybe Warhammer, but he’s not sure if that’s because she _actually_ enjoys it or if it was a good thing to do to keep her occupied and her mind off of Andy.

As they reach her bed he slowly turns them around and sits down with her because he doesn’t think he can maneuver her without her falling otherwise. She still mumbles things in Spanish and he has no clue as to why she only speaks Spanish while she’s drunk. He hasn’t even contemplated that she’s half Puerto Rican since the time when she asked him to use the formal _usted_ while speaking to her right before he moved in with her and Andy. He laughs a bit at the memory, which causes April to turn her head and look at him curiously with unsteady eyes, and he holds his breath as their eyes meet. She’s so incredibly close and he can see all the color shifts in her eyes, from a dark brown to a more lighter shade and small golden flecks, and he wants to reach up and brush some of her hair that’s covering one of her eyes away but restrains himself. Instead he shifts away a bit from April and reaches behind her to drag her covers down.

He feels her place her hand at the back of his neck, and his world freezes.

He looks up at her then, hand tightly gripping the edge of her covers, and she just looks at him, her eyes tracing his face, eyes, and his hair. And as he feels her hand touching his hair at the nape of his neck he lets out a shaky breath because this feels more intimate than anything he’s ever done before. Which is weird because he’s a grown man who’s had his fair share of girlfriends so this shouldn’t feel this intimate. But then again, he’s never really met anyone like April either. 

He collects himself and sits up, bringing the covers down with him and causing April’s hand to slip away from his neck, because even though this moment is overwhelming him he has to remember that April’s _drunk_ and probably has no idea what she’s doing. He bites the inside of his cheek to keep himself from saying something stupid as he stands up and helps April bring her legs up on the bed and then proceeds to remove her shoes as she lets out a loud drawn out sigh and collapses backwards onto her pillows.

He walks quickly as he gets her a glass of cold water and some painkillers from the kitchen and as he returns he finds that she’s turned to her side, her hands tucked under her chin. At first he believes her to be asleep but as he places the glass of water and the pills on her bedside table she opens her eyes and looks at him, and it’s weird that she’s somehow more intense in her staring when she’s drunk than when she’s sober.

“I left some water and painkillers here, okay?” he says while pointing at the table.

She nods slowly and he backs out of the room but instead of closing her door he leaves it ajar so he can hear her in case she calls for him or turns sick.

As he sits down on his own bed again, the room lit with the morning sun, he sighs deeply and rests his face in his hands. He still feels a bit shaken with what transpired between them because he hasn’t seen April touch anyone like that except for Andy that one time when he came home after witnessing Leslie on a date with Dave. And the whole thing makes the experience even more intimate since he knows April doesn’t just touch anyone like that – or maybe she thought he was Andy?

He sighs again, however he looks at it all its still kind of his fault – and not in the sense he wants it to be – that April and Andy broke up since he’s the one who offered the job to April. A job that was _his_ dream, not hers, she was just dragged along because he selfishly wanted someone he already knew with him. And yes, sure, it _is_ a good opportunity and experience for her, but they all know that this isn’t the career April really wants.

And now he has feelings for April, and if he felt bad about it before, it now feels like he’s stabbed Andy in the back with a sharp kitchen knife about twenty times because she touched him and he desperately hopes it wasn’t the last time.

 

* * *

 

He doesn’t see much of her the next couple of days because, quite frankly, she’s never home. And when she is she avoids him like the plague. It leaves him wondering if maybe April remembers more than she evidently wants to do from the night he helped her when she got home drunk. But the more he thinks about it the more confused he gets because she didn’t really do anything bad or embarrassing. It’s not like they kissed.

But then again, maybe an affectionate touch at the neck is as intimate as a kiss for someone like April. Maybe it’s even more intimate. 

He shakes himself from his trail of thoughts and focuses on the television again where the Real Housewives is currently running and he has absolutely no idea why he’s watching it. It’s oddly fascinating, like Game of Thrones but set in an alternative reality where they’re in Hollywood and the ones battling for the throne are bleached blondes with too much time on their hands. He kind of expects them to kill each other but they settle for mere backstabbing and hair pulling.

April would probably like this show.

He hunches forward with a groan and bangs his head against the table in front of him. Why does he have to make everything about her? It’s like when he had feelings for Leslie, his whole world revolved around her for weeks and now he’s like the moon, slowly orbiting around the earth where April is. And the whole thing upsets him because with Leslie there was still a chance that they could be something more, even though their work relationship got in the way. But _April_? There’s no way she’ll ever feel anything more than platonic acceptance toward him, because really, the woman dated two homosexual guys once and then the all-loving and _really_ funny Andy – how does one compete with that?

He ignores the slightly painful pull in his chest and raises into a sitting position again, letting his head fall back against the backrest, eyes looking vacantly up at the ceiling. He tiredly drums his fingers against his thighs in an unrecognizable pattern and wonders why he’s even there. If she’s never home, then why is he just sitting there on the sofa like a love-sick puppy waiting for her to come home and give him any sort of attention?

“ _God_ , I’m pathetic,” he mumbles as he drags his hands through his hair, causing it to stick out in disarray.

So he grabs his jacket and leaves the apartment. And it feels good to just walk around the block because here he can clear his mind and concentrate on things that have nothing to do with April, because contrary to their apartment, the street isn’t covered in her clutter. He takes a deep breath and relaxes his shoulders, rolling them slightly back and forth, and just mindlessly walks for what feels like two hours but is more like fifty minutes.

When he returns home he almost bumps into April in the hallway as he turns toward the kitchen and he’s struck by how weird everything is, how strained the air around them is, because she quickly turns her eyes down to the floor and steps around him in an attempt to flee. And she does this like she can go unnoticed, like he’s walked backwards into the room and hasn’t spotted her yet. Which is kind of absurd because they had eye contact for what felt like hours and still she tries to ignore him.  

“You going somewhere?” he asks because she’s picking up her jacket and has high-heels on. He doesn’t know if he’s ever seen her in high-heels before.

“Eeh, yeah,” she mumbles in the direction of the wall, eyes looking for something on the small table next to her. Or maybe she’s just looking anywhere but at him.

He nods but doesn’t think she notices. She doesn’t seem interested in getting an answer anyway because when she finds whatever she’s been looking for she quietly walks past him and the sound of the front door closing behind him almost drowns out the sound of his heart getting crushed.

She doesn’t come home that night either. 

At first he feels like hurling something at the wall, then a flood of sadness hits him and he feels ready to cry, which is fine really because he’s never been one of those guys who believe men can’t cry without somehow ending up losing all their sense of manliness and self-respect, but thankfully he doesn’t. Now he’s just mad because she’s out all night on a Sunday with four scheduled meetings the next day and it’s a job _he_ got her so it’s his ass on the line and he can’t believe that she’s being this irresponsible.

She calls in sick at nine so at least he knows she’s alive, and he hates the sense of relief he gets from knowing that she’s alright because he’s still extremely mad.

When he gets home that evening he’s still fuming so as soon as he closes the door behind him he moves toward her door and opens it, not caring if she’s half-decent or sleeping.

“What the hell were you thinking?” he half screams this because the tension has been building up all day and he’s about ready to explode. April lies on her stomach on her bed, arms buried under her pillow, her face facing the wall.

“Go away,” she says this meekly, like she’s just sobered up and has a huge headache, which she probably has. He doesn’t care.

“You seriously went out on a _Sunday_ and came home at what? Nine? Do you know how that will reflect back at me if word spreads that you called in sick because you were _drunk_?”

She slowly sits up with her legs dangling over the edge of the bed down to the floor, and for a second he thinks she might puke or something because she sways a bit and looks pale but before his anger dissipates and he goes to fetch her a bucket she pushes her hair out of her eyes and looks at him with a pinched expression. “I don’t care.”

“You don’t care.”

“I. Don’t. Care.”

He looks into her eyes and she looks as angry as he feels, but there’s also an intensity behind her eyes, like she’s daring him to challenge her. Like she thinks that poor mellow Ben hasn’t the backbone to take on a fight outside of the office. “Why are you being like this? What the hell have I done to cause you to act this way?”

“Just leave me the fuck alone, okay? I don’t need you to look after me, I don’t need you to sheer me up. You’ve been like a fucking nurse since I broke it off with Andy and if I needed someone like Ann in my life I could’ve just called her.” She’s standing in front of him now, her finger pointing accusingly at him. “I. Don’t. Need. You.”

He inches a bit closer to her, his back hunching subconsciously so they’re almost the same height. “Is this seriously about me caring about you being happy? Do you always drink yourself into a stupor every time someone tries to drag your fucking two hundred stories high defense wall down?”

“Yeah, well, have you ever thought that maybe I _don’t_ want you on the other side of that wall?”

It feels like she’s physically hit him because he’s never in his life wished to be close to a person as he does April. And the way she just discards and rebuffs his feelings back into his face hurts more than he’s ever imagined it could.

He feels his anger leaving him because really, he can’t be a part of April’s life if she doesn’t want him there. No matter how much he pushes and screams.

He slumps his shoulders and looks down at the floor. “I… I haven’t looked at it that way.” He turns his head and looks slightly behind him, arm coming up to point at the open door before it drops down to his side again, “I’ll show myself–“

“Shut up.”

And when he thought he couldn’t actually feel more pain in his chest she doesn’t even let him finish his sentence about leaving her alone, and he can’t help but to wonder how the hell they ended up here. Why did he have to pick a fight with her? Why couldn’t he just settle for the strained and awkward friendship they had left a couple of days ago?

He nods his head and is about to leave when April makes that sound that she does sometimes, the really frustrated and slightly annoyed one that comes from the back of her throat. “ _Shut up_.”

“I’m not actually say–“ 

And then he feels her grab his head and before he can register what the hell is going on he feels her lips on his and his whole world just screeches to a halt.

Even though he’s imagined this several times he doesn’t feel the slightest bit prepared and he can feel himself slowly drowning in an emotional overload. She tilts his head slightly to the side and it’s like he’s just remembering that he has limbs of his own that he can use, so he brings one arm up to rest against the small of her back, pulling her slightly closer, and lets the other hand tangle in her hair. And the thing that almost brings him to his knees is not, surprisingly, the moment his tongue meets hers and he’s as close to her as he can get with their clothes still on, but it’s the moment he feels her running her fingers through the fine hairs at the back of his neck.

But before he gets to marvel in the sensation April pulls away, and he sees as the feeling of dread creeps into her gaze before she abruptly turns away from him and flees out the door. And it’s not before the front door slams shut that he lets out the breath he’s been holding and quietly sinks down onto April’s vacant bed, hands threaded into hair in disbelief.


	5. The Finale

Three days later and he still hasn’t seen April. Which in itself is weird because they’re in Washington and last he checked she didn’t have any new close friends who she spends a lot of time with, so he has absolutely no idea where she’s been the last couple of days. It worries him a bit but he tries not to think about it too much. Maybe she’s back in Pawnee and just hasn’t said anything. 

He still hasn’t really grasped what happened because one minute they were _fighting_ and the next he had her in his arms, her lips pressed to his. He hasn’t fought with April before so maybe that’s one of her wicked ways of winning an argument and getting the upper hand, by just throwing caution out the window and fuck with his mind. But then again, he’d already put down his hypothetical battle-axe and was thinking of leaving when she just, kind of out of the blue, irritatingly told him to shut up. Twice. When he wasn’t actually saying anything.

And then she kissed him.

Then he remembers the complete look of horror that settled in her eyes the moment they broke apart, and he furrows his brows at the memory because he doesn’t know what that means either. Maybe it was an attempt to throw him off and when he kissed her back he revealed how he truly feels and she panicked and fled? Or maybe she wasn’t thinking straight there for a minute and then suddenly realized what the hell she was doing. And with whom.

He has to stop thinking about this lest he goes insane. 

The next day he actually sees her in the office corridor and he has no idea how she’s been able to avoid him for so long when her desk is literally on the other side of a glass wall form his. She completely ignores him of course, but the way she fidgets with the papers piled in her hands leaves him to believe that she might not be as unaffected as she wants him to think. And as with anything that has to do with April, that could either be because A, a good thing: that she actually felt something as well and doesn’t want to speak to him because she’s scared or something similar, or B, a bad thing. He doesn’t want to think about option B so he just leaves it as _a bad thing_.

A knock brings him out of his thoughts and it’s like she’s been summoned because before him stands a bored looking April with her arm stretched out at him, hand holding a file. She looks okay, he thinks. Well she always looks _good_ but she doesn’t appear to have slept bad recently which makes him wonder if there’s an option C, an I-really-don’t-care thing. He swallows and accepts the file.

“Are you okay? I haven’t seen you in a while…” He looks up from the file he’s been scanning while summoning up the courage to actually speak to her before she leaves and hopes he catches some kind of fleeting emotion that she can’t hide on her face. 

“Yeah. Peachy,” April says while she crosses her arms in front of her chest, and he’s fairly sure that he’s read somewhere that that’s an subconscious act of guarding ones person.

“Where have you been?”

“Around.”

“No. I– I mean, where have you stayed?” His voice falters a bit at the end of the question and he’s not entirely sure if he’s entitled to ask it in the first place.

She glances up at him, mouth tilted to the side, as she seems to contemplate something. “I’ve been staying with Ellis.”

As hard as he tries to seem unaffected he’s pretty sure she sees the grimace he makes as a knife of feelings stab at his chest. “Oh…”

And it’s like his brain hates him because now he can’t stop imagining her with Ellis in every possible way imaginable. He wishes he was somewhere else because now he has to walk around the office and face the possibility of him running into a smug looking Ellis. Seriously, that kid is always smug, but if he’s been with April he has all the reason to, and he hates him all the more for it. 

Then comes the awkward pause, because really, what can he say? He wants her back home. He wants under her skin where he might stand a chance in learning how her mind works. What she thinks of him. But the more he talks and pushes for it, the more he’ll force her away, that much he knows. It makes him think about that time when April and Donna paired everyone up with a dog at the shelter who was supposedly their spirit animal. April got a rare black Siberian Husky and while that was a good choice at the time, he wonders if she isn’t more like Donna now, more like a cat. Because everything with April is on her terms, if she wants you close she’ll keep you close. If you want her close but she’s not really into it, she’ll leave. She might bare you her tummy for petting, but she might just as fast turn and claw and bite your arm and push you away.

“Will you be home tonight?” he asks and hopes it isn’t too forward. 

She stares at him with a dead expression and he tries really hard not to start fidgeting under her scrutiny but fails miserably and quickly diverts his eyes to the floor.

“Yes.”

He looks up again, expecting her to still stand there with the same expression, but instead he’s met with her retreating back as he watches her walk out of his office and down the corridor.

True to her words he hears the jiggling of keys outside their front door, the quiet click as it opens and closes, the shuffle of feet that aren’t his, at eight.

 

* * *

 

He won’t lie; it’s awkward to live with April now. The kind of awkwardness that’s just constantly there – when they meet in the corridor between the kitchen and her room and they move out of the way of each other by moving in the same direction until he smiles dejectedly, grabbing her shoulders in the process to keep her form moving again as he steps around her – _that_ kind of awkwardness. So he understands why April mostly keeps to her room. And it’s a good thing really, because he feels embarrassingly tongue-tied every time he sees her. Like he’s fifteen all over again and still hasn’t figured out how to approach the opposite sex without rambling incoherently.

The air around them is stifling and he wants so desperately for it to go away, for them to somehow go back to the somewhat easy friendship they had before the kiss. And since he can’t really form coherent sentences right now in her presence he contemplates writing her, which makes him cringe because it sounds so cliché and he knows how much April hates the thought of writing.

So he doesn’t. Not for several weeks at least.

But when he hasn’t come any closer to actually have a real conversation with April over a month after what he now refers to as _the incident_ – albeit a really nice and extremely memorable one for him – he kind of gives in to his impulses and writes a simple note and leaves it outside of her door early in the morning.

Two hours later she appears in the doorway to the living room, her hand holding the note with the scribbled _Hi_ he left as if it’s the most offensive thing she’s ever seen. “What is this?” 

He thought something handwritten would somehow make it less horrible for April to handle than, say, a text message on her phone, but the look on her face shows that maybe it was on the contrary. “It’s a note.”

“Well, duh, I can see that,” she says while rolling her eyes, clearly indicating that he’s probably the most IQ deprived human being she’s met that day. “The question is why you’re leaving stupid notes outside my door.” It comes out more as a statement than an actual question.

“I thought we needed to communicate more.” The instance it leaves his mouth he wants to go hide under a rock because it sounds so… lame. And what right does he have to force this upon April when she clearly hates everything about his stupid idea? 

She just looks at him for a few seconds, eyebrows pinched together in either annoyance or thoughtfulness, or maybe both, before she abruptly turns and leaves the room.

Well, at least this behavior he recognizes.

He leaves another note the next morning and finds it a couple of hours later crumpled up in the sink, his written _Hello_ almost unnoticeable in the soggy sad pile of yellowish paper. So he writes another on a post-it and sticks it to the bathroom mirror and he can’t help but smile as he imagines her face, pinched together in distaste, as she sees it right before she sets of to work. She’ll probably be twitchy and annoyed for the rest of the day after that. It’s kind of worth it.

So he continues like this, leaving notes outside her room on the floor or sticking then on walls, mirrors, things, _surfaces_ that he knows she’ll pass although she never answers. Sometimes he finds them ruined somewhere in the apartment – a clear indication that she was not in the mood to get any cheery notes stuck to her shoes – and sometimes he only finds them gone and he wonders if she just throws those away. 

One day, when April’s having a particularly bad day – which he knows the second she leaves her room and slams her door behind her, stomping her feet as she walks to the bathroom – he sticks a note to one of his orc soldiers and places it quickly on her nightstand before she returns. And he feels quite satisficed when he finally gets a response from her even though it’s nailed to his pillow with the use of a staple gun, her reply hastily scribbled under his now completely scratched over drawing of Li’l Sebastian smiling, which in truth looked absolutely horrendous.

_Go and die_. 

He releases a soft laugh that he’s pretty sure April hears before he securely places the note inside the drawer of his nightstand.

 

* * *

  

It’s like a floodgate opens after that and he ends up getting a threatening answer to every written note he leaves her. And he gets oddly happy every time, because it really doesn’t matter what she writes as long as it’s _something_ because it has to mean something. It has to. April never does anything she doesn’t want to, as long as there aren’t any ulterior motives involved and he can’t see how his notes would contribute to anything like that. 

He turns his attention to the television again and watches as the bachelorette burst out in tears as she denies someone a rose before he changes the channel.

“No. Change back,” April states as she throws herself down on the other end of the sofa before she leans toward him and smacks a post-it note to his forehead. As he reaches up and plucks the note form his forehead and turns to read it she adds, “She’s just starting to hiccup.” 

_Hi, I’m Ben. I’m pathetic_.

“I take it you didn’t like the teaser from my new fan fiction.” 

She just glances over at him with dead eyes. “No one likes anything that has to do with your fan fiction. Trust me.”

They sit in silence for a while. Well, as silent as it can get with a young woman pouring her heartache out on television.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you something…” his voice comes off a bit soft and unsure and he hates it when it does that because now the subject he broaches is going to sound ten times more important than it has to. And even though it’s exactly as important as it sounds to him, she doesn’t have to know that. “How come you stayed with Ellis?”

He expects her to just stand up and leave the room because this is the most they’ve talked and spent time together in what feels like forever. And he doesn’t know if it’s because he decided to write a note with a made-up teaser to a not-yet-written fan fiction to ease the seriousness with the notes or if it’s because of something else entirely. He kind of foolishly hopes she’s missed his company as much as he’s missed hers.

She doesn’t answer right away and he doesn’t know if that’s because she doesn’t instantly understand as to what he’s referring to or if she’s buying time. And it’s in that instance it occurs to him that this question might dig up more trouble than he’s anticipated because it’s as close to a reference to the kiss that he’ll get without actually mentioning it. He swallows nervously and focuses his eyes on the television.

“He was easy to bully.”

The finality in her voice causes an explosion to erupt in his chest and he’s surrounded by a fuzzy warm feeling of contentment because it didn’t mean anything. Ellis didn’t mean anything. He wants to grin giddily at her but he settles for a small smile as he leans back against the back of the sofa, head lolling back a bit as he turns it and looks at her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” And the best part is that she smiles back, a tiny almost nonexistent stretch of her lips that ends up turning his insides to complete mush, and all he ever wants to do is see it again.

“Hey, why do you only speak Spanish when you’re drunk?” It just suddenly pops into his head and he can’t stop himself from asking even though it somehow feels more intimate than the previous question.

She frowns. “I don’t.”

“Yeah you do, that night when you–“ he suddenly stops because _god_ , what’s up with his inability to refrain from asking questions that are somehow related to uncomfortable topics. But then again, that night maybe only means something more to him since he’s the one who kind of had his heart stomped on. “–when you came home and ruined one of your lizardmen, remember? You said a lot of things but all I can remember is quiero quedarme aquí or something like that.” He looks over at her again. “What does it mean?”

She pales and stares intently at the wall next to the television, and he’s never seen April like this before. As he’s about to ask her what’s wrong she stands up and says, “I need to throw up.”

“What?” He looks up at her in alarm.

“It means I need to throw up,” she says as she gestures with her arm toward her room. “I have to go.”

He stares at her retreating back in confusion and wonders what the hell just happened but he can’t for the life of him figure out what would cause such a reaction from April. A feeling settles in his stomach, it’s like a bubble of hope has wedged itself in his throat, and before he can question himself he fetches out his phone from his pocket and looks up Google Translate. _Quiero quedarme aquí_. It takes a couple of tries before he thinks he gets the spelling right, but when he does he feels his heart simultaneously stop and speed up in a sort of panicked happiness. _I want to stay here_.

She said that when she was sitting in his bed. She said that mere minutes before she affectionately placed her hand on his neck, her fingers idly playing with the hairs there.

He doesn’t know if he has the guts to believe that it means what he thinks it does, because what if he’s wrong? What if she only said something she didn’t entirely mean when she was drunk and now April’s panicking because she knows what he probably thinks of it all. What if it’s all just a big misunderstanding?

But if it is, why did she kiss him?

He blows out a long breath of air and slumps forward, forearms resting on thighs, as he mulls everything over in his head, and before he can question what the hell he’s doing he stands up and walks in the direction of April’s room. He contemplates knocking but discards the thought as he reaches the door, opting instead to just open it and step in before he looses his nerve.

As he enters and closes the door behind him April looks up from her sitting position on her bed, eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What are you doing?” 

He ignores her and walks up to her, hands reaching out to grab her, forcing her to stand in front of him. “I want to stay here.”

It takes a moment for her to react to his words, but when she catches on she turns an even paler shade and he has to use all his willpower not to tightly grip her arms in an attempt to keep her from running away. He looks at her and it’s so weird to see his own fears and uncertainties reflected back at him from her eyes, because that moment is probably the first time he sees her that clearly. The first time he understands what she’s feeling without question and his breath is almost knocked out of him by the overwhelming emotions.

He takes a step closer to her and as she glances up at him, eyes surprisingly eager for contact, he slowly inches his hands up her arms and the feeling of her skin against his almost breaks him. He takes a deep breath and it’s like they’re the same because she does too and he can’t understand where all of this clarity comes from – where its been all this time. As his hands reach her neck, her hair, he can’t hold back any longer. He leans forward probably quicker than he should and claims her lips with his. And when her hands drag through his hair to pull his face closer to hers he throws caution out the window and just lets go, one hand burrowed in her hair at the nape of her neck as the other inches up under her shirt and settles at her waist.

April nips at his bottom lip then and slips her tongue inside his mouth and he lets out an embarrassing little sound that sounds so absolutely pathetic that he contemplates apologizing, but it quickly leaves his mind the moment she turns them around and quite forcefully pushes him down onto her bed and climbs onto his lap. His hands settle at her hips before he glides them up under her shirt again and rests them at the small of her back and the sound that leaves her then is anything but pathetic. And as he thinks this can’t get any better she experimentally rolls her hips forward, causing him to break the kiss as he leans his head back and groans. She takes advantage of the situation and trails openmouthed kisses down his throat and he can’t take this. He grabs her waist and in one swift motion he has April on her back with him hovering over her, slightly panting as he tries to force air down his burning lungs before he claims her lips in another kiss.

They somehow end up getting rid of their clothes and he can’t believe that this is happening. That it’s _April_ who’s moving under him, her warm breath that fans over his ear as she moans, her hands that pull him closer.

“Is it good?” he wonders when she grows more quiet, her eyes shut tightly. He’s about to ask again when she reaches up and places her hand over his mouth, head nodding almost imperceptibly, “Shut up.”

He doesn’t last long after that and it takes him a couple of minutes before he gets April there as well. And as they lay there panting he can’t help but to wonder how it’s going to be now because they’ve never actually talked about any of this. He’s never said that he’s falling in love with her and all she’s ever done is run.

The next morning when he wakes up with the sun in his face he knows April isn’t there with him. He looks around, feeling slightly disoriented, before his eyes land on the disfigured lizardman standing on her nightstand, and he can’t help but to smile as he reads the note it’s holding. 

_I want you on the other side of the wall._

It feels like the turning point.


End file.
